DAVE McCULLOUGH discovers what’s cooking on the KITCHENWARE label and samples the delights of HURRAH! and THE DAINTEES

Article published in Sounds, 30th October, 1982

Kitchenware | Hi-Kitch | “Truth to tell, the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify in its turn, and to produce an ARTIFICIAL MYTH . . . Since myth robs language of something, why not rob myth?” (Roland Barthes, ‘Mythologies’)

THE PICTURE on the dazzling, impressive video machine is of Hurrah! of Newcastle Upon Tyne totally SLAYING YOU. They are filmed somewhere that looks like an old castle; the song is their single ‘The Sun Shines Here’ on Kitchenware Records of Newcastle, which is our topic for this week.

Someone there is wearing shades; he oozes Myth and Style and it doesn’t hurt anyone in the process — there’s an innocence there too; somebody’s playing a zither: A ZITHER – it is your Classic Rock Image, long forgotten, trodden over. But doesn’t that simple, slaying Myth take effect when it returns!

Last time it returned was Postcard Records Of Scotland. In interviewing Hurrah!, the Daintees and Kitchenware supremo Keith Armstrong there is unremitting deja vu about the whole deal.

‘Kitchenware Are The New Postcard.’

Simple fact – and, like that video Myth, it doesn’t matter one bit. When it returns, it returns. It’s robbing the rockpop myth, as old Roland says. And why not!

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KEITH ARMSTRONG is a Geordie, whatever that is, I’d say in his late twenties. He’s a cheeky bugger in the rockpop world, in the sense that he’s made a move. Made a Myth already of his Kitchenware label.

Making a move in rockpop means cheekily (?) forming a label, getting more than one act on it, and — here’s the difficult bit — making sure they are bloody good acts.

The geographical fluke angle of this latter point can be discussed elsewhere (some chance!) but the truth is, if you’ll excuse the mysticism, that there is a breeze that blows perhaps once every rock year. It has gone to Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh. And now ‘Geordieland, whatever that is, and Kevin Keegan, whoever she is.

IF THE ROCK INDUSTRY MYTH ROBS US OF SO MUCH, WHY NOT ROB IT IN RETURN?

It isn’t even that difficult —once you’ve discovered the brace (not more, you just need two groups) of acts you require, you then utilise little bits of the Myth that in the past have worked.

Copies of The Face are strewn about Keith’s floor; that’s one useful angle, at least — getting across to the otherwise dunderheaded student audience, of which, to my uneducated surprise, Newcastle has a large portion of (viz. Sink Or Swim, that repulsive TV programme).

Alan Horne

A more than useful angle, and to my complete astonishment, is the silly fact that young Keith’s done a COURSE STUDY in rock music! He spent time, unbelievably (more unbelievably still because he hasn’t gone gaga cynical) following reps and the like around while they did their various evil deeds and hyped this or that into the Great British Chart Scene.

He knows the industry inside out; mostly inside.

We talk in a smart Newcastle cafe (deja vu Alan Horne!) and Alan makes us both laugh now and then with this, otherwise gentle, man’s ferocity. I’ve never set eyes or ears on Hey! Elastica but instinct and friends more than tell me they are repugnant pig droppings.

Keith boy fills in the cracks — “THEY ARE TOTAL GUNGE, MAN! They got this old baldy singer who looks about forty, they’ve ripped off Fire Engines something TERRIBLE, man, they’ve all got these Mohican haircuts that would make you puke up even looking at. Oh man they are THE PITS, believe me!”

We both giggle. We both realise, these many years on (since punk!) that Hey! Pratsicka or whatever you call ’em are part of the grand myth too.

Only, this is the difference, Keith and Co are mythier, sexier, lovelier, things-of-Beauty, and they don’t rot your gums. This Keith guy’s my kinda fella.

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KITCHENWARE STARTED, initially, nearly a year ago, thru Keith and chums’ Soul Kitchen’ club (the name IS sarcastic, don’t worry) which set the otherwise backward Geordieland music scene alight.

Keith: “It was started mainly thru frustration. Nobody I’d put on any of the bands we wanted to see. I personally went round every single promoter in Newcastle and asked them to put on Fire Engines and each of them said, Who?

“There’s only really two promoters anyway and they normally put on abysmal local bands who they then totally rip off something rotten . . .”

(EDITORTIAL NOTICE: If this round about now sounds like the typical r’n’r version of that famous Hollywood B-movie cliche of ‘the new sheriff cleaning up the town’ then it is because it is just that.)

Historical precedences are all-important in terms of Kitchenware (rock history having been purposefully destroyed). I could quote Roland on ya again, but I won’t (cue loud cheers.)

Soul Kitchen

Keith: “We’ve been thinking about starting a club, me and my friends, all last summer. There’s me, Paul and Phil who’s the best dee jay in town as well, and we clubbed together fifty quid each and that was about enough to get the Fire Engines on. Mind you, we paid them three hundred quid in the end. We were so naive we paid people too much at the start! We didn’t know a thing about promoting.

“I think the bands saw us coming — they always got these huge amounts of dough! We did it all thru pure enthusiasm. Just get the people in there . . .”

Any results?

“The place was sold out from the first night.”

Even at the first show the support act was a special video. The will to make ‘Soul Kitchen’ special was there from the start (also perhaps an excusable over compensation to the Southern world of The Face et al).

“I think you’ve got a duty to get across music that nobody else has heard. Radio and TV are useless. Peel’s played both our groups, he’s good, but I have to say his show is unlistenable.

“Peel feels he has to play everything, which is right in a way, but I have to say to him now, Sharpen up your ideas!”

Kitchenware | Hi-Kitch

Armstrong, though he’ll deny it, is good because he’s critical in an active way. He can spot a good group. He’s also currently important in bursting the bubble of the Isn’t Everything Wunnerful An’ Healthy schtick.

Example: “Mike Hawkes, Kid Jensen’s producer, refused to play the Daintees because he said it was too Radio Two. I phoned him up and said he had to be joking! He wasn’t. Though you have to be careful what you say to these people . . .”

Again, shades of Herr Horne, the latter meeting a certain DJ blasting him for his shoddy shows. Result: few plays for his acts. These dee jays are all heart and no brains. Terry Wogan’s a final hope.

Keith: “Thing about up here is that you have a lot of students. We’ve one of the biggest fashion colleges in the country up here, which is important to the current music scene. There are a lot of different people from all over the country here now, each bringing their different styles in.

“There again, the Daintees have been wearing those jeans with criss crosses on the back for three or four years now. They pick them up in Gateshead for three quid. Last time we were in London they were going for twenty quid a throw. Unbelievable it is!”

Car lovers

THE DAINTEES are incredible. Let me put that another — way: it is hard to take their existence that seriously. For a start, they all have a hankering after old cars. My day in The Land Of Our Kev, The Little Vole, included journeys in a Ford Anglia and a Mark 1 Cortina, both in mint condition.

The fact that it took us two hours to travel to Sunderland from Newcastle is almost irrelevant, not to say irreverent (the boys ADORE their cars). Those cars are surreal, they ‘turn heads’ in a way the Sierra could never do. How this old car penchant is ideologically linked to said Daintees is hard to tell.

Interviewing them, as we’ll later see, is like trying to crack an egg with a guitar. You feel you’re walking across sacred, not to say youthful innocent territory; it’s somebody’s toy train set of a hobby you are hammering with a cassette recorder.

The jalopies are apposite to Daintees though (obviously). They’ve been together five years, they were a BUSKING BAND previously. Keith had them audition by playing in the HMV record store he works at. It didn’t take long to decide.

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“Daintees are charming and original. They’ve been playing in front of seven people in Sunderland most of their lives . . . “

There’s a lovely story, like A Star is Born, where Keith ordered them out of one such dive after they’d finished their (£15) set and informed the owner, sharply, that in future she’d have to pay to see THEM. “They won’t ever play that kind of place in their lives again, I’ll be seeing to that . . .”

Daintees are an incredible Art Garfunkel voice (“Martin went round town the day your review came out having everyone singing ‘Bright Eyes’ to him. He hated it!”) and a gentle, together group backing it.

Much tougher are Hurrah!, albeit slotting into Orange Juice toughness or roundabouts (!).

Supporting the Bluebells

Keith: “Hurrah! were the first group I got I had them support the Bluebells at the ‘Soul Kitchen’ and they were great! So many strong songs there! I took them down to studios in London to do the ‘Sun Shines Here’ single, while the Daintees literally nipped in while everyone was having their tea break and did ‘Roll On Summertime’!

“I mean, those two songs capture the feeling of Kitchenware perfectly. It’s like, it might be raining where you are, but the sun’s shining up here for us! We’re really optimistic about things, the way things are happening musically for us at least.

“All that stuff about the Geordie Depression is mostly romanticised down South. I mean, the favourite question when we do radio interviews up here is, Do you connect yourselves with the optimism of a crusade like the Jarrow March? I nearly fell over laughing at that.

“We want nothing to do with the Newcastle of the past. Newcastle starts here with us. We LIKE Newcastle, it’s a great place to live. Ever since we’ve started Kitchenware other bands from up here have started standing up for themselves, refusing to be ripped off like they’ve been all their lives by these sharks of promoters, knowing at last from us how NOT to be . . .

“KITCHENWARE IS staunchly independent in that we won’t get pushed around by the companies. There again, without the cash you can’t do much. What we’ve got to do is to make the label strong enough to attract the finance to do what we’ve got to do.

“I think the radio, music press, rock TV is incredibly lazy. I want to shake that all up, at least . . .

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For me Postcard failed because Alan Horne didn’t know anything about the rock business when he started out. When OJ played here recently they were horrified even then when I told them how they were being promoted in my shop, which is a chart return shop. The cost the major companies put into completely talentless bastards is crazy. Their laziness too. Fashion, Haysi Fantazyee, Hey! Thingnamabob, all complete DUNG Dave!

“What companies don’t understand is that success depends on talent. You could dress the Daintess up if you want, but, it doesn’t make a difference, they have the talent there.”

Have the small-brained but comprehensive accusations of OJ ripping off stung any?

“Yeah, we of course got all that at first. It would be a lie to say we were not Postcard influenced. We are very much so. But we tend to only like a few things; like ‘Blue Boy’, which they now disown. Or the Josef K album which is like a trip to the dentists we know but we love it.

I’m no Svengali

“I think Horne tried to manipulate his bands; I leave mine alone to a greater extent. I’m not a Svengali, I’m there to see that the bands are successful . . .

“We’ve had offers from four big companies so far. But we’re hanging back. If the Daintees signed to anybody tomorrow, I mean they’d be wrecked by the end of the week. We’re like a big family at Kitchenware. There’s Phil, there’s my girlfriend Jenny who does the designing work. She’s doing a college course which she’s using to design clothes for Hurrah! (things they like and want to wear!) at the moment.

“Plus we did that Tyne Tees video and we’re doing another one soon. Plus we’re playing the Venue on the 11th of November with Aztec Camera . . .We’re all ex students Dave, and it feels so good at the moment, we can afford to sit back and think about signing . . .”

Kitchenware | Hi-Kitch

Keith asks me what I think of the new pop (“How CAN you like ABC???”): I say it’s a good holding movement, it isn’t at all politically viable, all those groups, ABCs, Simple Minds et al — they’re like chained bears.

Keith says, “I hate all that. They aren’t writing the ‘classics of tomorrow’ and they f***n’ well know it. ‘Credibility’ has turned into a dirty word, but I like it still. I’d like most of all for Kitchenware to have credibility.

“Look at that picture of the Bunnymen on the inside sleeve of ‘Crocodiles’; look at any Velvets picture; look at Edwyn’s face on the centre of ‘Blue Boy’ — they’re all only pictures, images, but THEY’RE the sort of things that can fire you to do anything!”

To paraphrase Rollie again: the camera always lies, it’s a despicable thing. But I see what Armstrong’s getting at:

Making up your own myth and making it gigantic sized.

AUTHOR’S IRISHIFIED DIGRESSION:

Kitchenware are good because they make things, generally, a lot clearer. They show up the ultimate timidity, compared to punk, or the current ‘new pop’, ABC et al.

ABC et al can only alter people’s heads. They don’t carry out the necessary, original r’n’r function of active change. They are, as I say, a holding movement, and a great one at that.

Kitchenware show that, much more important, is the earthier external approach if, as it rarely can hope to do, it works. They are a political force and they’ve hardly been born! This is the true force of music, a much more fulfilling gesture than some others. Before, we can tell, it stops being a gesture completely.

HURRAH!

HURRAH!, LIKE The Daintees, seem, it has to be said JL straightaway, to have been in a Geordie time capsule while post-Punk ravaged outside.

Like the Daintees they are so unaffected and curiously unself-conscious about trends and arguments! This early, they are a disaster area in interview terms. Ask them anything and the reply HAS to boil down to something akin to, ‘Just because we enjoy it so much!’

I’d call ’em pre-lapsarian if I knew what it exactly meant. Certainly they aren’t messed up.

Even in the way they dress they look so superbly, naturally casual! Using the cowboy image again, they are ready made exuders of style and poise. They sport these quasi-cowhand leathers (?) that make them look like little John Waynes! It’s all too magnificent to describe! The video performance even rivals Adam! And you thought Orange Juice were scrumptious!!!

Gloria

“We enjoy being a pop group. We enjoy the ideas connected with that. I wouldn’t say we’re the Monkees but . . .yes we are!”

Hurrah! are a cross between the Monkees and Joy Division: work that out yourself, but ’tis all true. They have a song called ‘Gloria’ (even the title, that cheek . . . !) which rivals the Byrds’ ‘Chestnut Mare’ in the classic stakes.

Their songs each have little orgasms on the back of them; they are deeply married to and reverent to the god Pop Music. Probably they are a less cranky, less art schooly Teardrop Explodes circa ‘Bouncing Babies’.

They have that same vivacity. Their records, their looks (those shades!) spring at you and knock you in the face.

Taffy and Paul both chorus, ecstatically — “We suddenly found ourselves thinking, God, we’re being talked about in the same breath as Orange Juice! My God!”

Still a little dazed and mystified by the early success of Keith’s mythifying, Hurrah! will come down to earth in time to make classic singles. I just hope they hurray! up.

Hurrah’s first single is called ‘The Sun Shines Here’ and is on Kitchenware Records.

THE DAINTEES

LIKE I say, weirdos to a man. For a start their Geordie accents, whatever they are, are so thick I could scarcely make out a word of what they were saying and was too exhausted to start unscrambling the dialogue.

Suffice it to say, the Daintees are an experience. Watching them run thru their set, their closest affinities take some beating. How’s this: Dean Friedman, Art Garfunkel, Steely Dan, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Kim Carnes with just the merest (British) dab of Aztec Camera.

Embarrassed, I read out this list to them and ringleader Martin, who looks like a handsome Jerry Dammers and has a voice worth a million pounds (like Garfunkel), surprises me even more by agreeing with most of them.

The Daintees are about daintily (as in cunningly) rummaging through rock’s obscure drawers and discovering some hidden winners.

They have weeping guitar lines; their (already Wee Girl Attracting) drummer (the Cortina retainer) uses brushes; Martin’s eyelids hover at mid point in the most romantic way when he sings; they all look on stage so ridiculous cute and serious at the same time at what they’re doing they make you want to take them home and cuddle them. This is the kind of heap of ice cream the Daintees can turn you into.

Most of all, significantly, the Daintees are good players, unlike their Postcardian alter egos who at this same stage weren’t. This is progress. The Daintees first single is ‘Roll On Summertime’ and is also on Kitchenware Records and Tapes.

AND FINALLY ESTHER?

And finally Edwyn, those wishing to be ahead of the rest and grab some Kitsch And Wear, should contact: Kitchenware Household Goods, 104 Westerhope, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. Tell them Kevin Keegan sent you.